Monthly Archives: December 2014

I know this is not exactly painting-related, but still, I’ve been working on it for the whole December, so I wanted to share this as well. Back in June, I started modeling with clay, thrilled by the possibility of taking my weird ideas into a living 3d shape. My first experiment has been a Moogle (from the Final Fantasy series) followed by Figaro, the cat, from the Classic Disney movie Pinocchio. This time I went through a harder (and bigger, so to speak) challenge: have a look at the following character

It’s Gargoyle, from a really old Japanese animated series known as “Nadia: the secret of Blue Water”. A friend of mine really likes this character, so I water to gift him with a 3d sculpture of its weird mask, instead of a simple drawing. The challenge lays in the fact that, in the anime, the expression seems to change (drawing magic, huh!) depending on the character’s mood. This is obviously not possible in reality, so I had to shape the “eyebrows” to account for the various perspectives and “moods”. I’m pretty satisfied with the result, and my friend is, as well!

A few days ago I got terribly inspired by a video I saw on the Art Tutor Facebook page (this one: Make Your Own Watercolor Christmas Cards – 2014) and I decided to take on the challenge of painting robins myself! I used some reference photos I found on Pinterest (here: http://www.pinterest.com/easeljourneys/inspirational/) and drew a couple of quick sketches of the birds. Then, I traced them using vellum, exactly as shown in the Art Tutor video, covered the back with a soft pencil, and traced them down to watercolor paper (140lbs Bockingford NOT). Here are the paintings, followed by the sketches:

I didn’t use the last sketch yet, nor the other reference image I have (which is quite inspiring, I have to say). So I believe I’ll come up with something else very soon. As for the palette, I used a mix of Rose Madder and Lemon Yellow for the orange of the breast, then Ultramarine plus Burnt Sienna for the various gray/blue/brown colors, varying proportions to get the different tones. For the black, once more the same two colors but with as little water as I could.

It was definitely funny, have a go yourself! Feel free to use my sketches as references for your own cards! And thanks again to Siân Dudley for the inspiring video!

I’ve been following Will Kemp’s tutorials at Art Tutor for a while, and have been impressed by how easy it is to get into acrylic painting by watching them. Here are a couple of landscapes I recently painted following his guidelines. I decided to take them a bit further in detail compared to the original lessons.

Well if so, and you love watercolors, why not taking this chance to practice the medium? I made a couple of simple ones to try painting some believable snow. I laid down a pale wash of cobalt blue + permanent rose (just a touch) on pre-wet paper (preserving some of the white flecks by spattering some masking fluid), trying to form the snow’s shadow; then, added the fir trees’ greenery with cobalt + quinacridone gold + a touch of viridian here and there. I’m pretty satisfied with the result: